


Lab safety doesn't matter until the one day it does

by Trifoliate_undergrowth



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hermann being ride or die, Panic, Sharing Clothes, because newts are covered in T o x ic G o O, both idiots freaking out differently, even (especially) when Newt is endangering himself w stupid stuff, not tagged as ship bc there's no time for flirting, stripping (for SCIENCE), the platonic intimacy of helping your friend get their toxic clothes off as fast as possible, when you're tryign to not die from poison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26788738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trifoliate_undergrowth/pseuds/Trifoliate_undergrowth
Summary: “…incredibly toxic, and I’ve just dumped it all over myself haven’t I,” Newt finished. He looked down at himself and felt his eyes burning from the fumes. It didn’t seem to be stinging his skin yet, he thought with a disconnected interest, but that would start any minute now. Huh. He should be taking notes.“Are you going to die?” said Hermann, in a tone Newt had never heard from him before.He wanted to say, no, he’d be fine, he just needed to get out of these contaminated clothes and wash himself off as quickly as possible and also Hermann should probably leave now that there was a big spill of kaiju blue just loose on the floor, but instead he started laughing and couldn’t stop.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler & Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	Lab safety doesn't matter until the one day it does

Newt wasn’t sure why he’d started complaining about the delivery, presumably to Hermann, who was the only other person in the lab. He just needed to _tell_ somebody how messed up it was that whoever was responsible for shipping him a can of kaiju blue had allowed it to pass through many people’s hands and be jostled around, at risk of spreading its toxic contents, and it wasn’t even properly sealed, like come on man this isn’t a joke this stuff will kill you. He was saying, when he dropped it.

He never could quite figure out how it happened. Just that it seemed inevitable and yet terrifyingly unexpected, and that there was an eternal, frozen, yet very brief moment where it had tipped out of his hand and slumped against his chest and he could feel something cold and wet running down his shirt and he realized he’d fucked up, and then it fell onto the floor with a clang, spreading spatters of blue even further across the floor.

Hermann, who had previously been replying to his rant with uninterested “Mm-hmm”s and “right”s, suddenly turned around, evidently guessing from the combination of the noise and his sudden silence that something had gone wrong. His face froze.

“… _incredibly_ toxic, and I’ve just dumped it all over myself haven’t I,” Newt finished. He looked down at himself and felt his eyes burning from the fumes. It didn’t seem to be stinging his skin yet, he thought with a disconnected interest, but that would start any minute now. Huh. He should be taking notes.

“Are you going to die?” said Hermann, in a tone Newt had never heard from him before.

He wanted to say, no, he’d be fine, he just needed to get out of these contaminated clothes and wash himself off as quickly as possible and also Hermann should probably leave now that there was a big spill of kaiju blue just loose on the floor, but instead he started laughing and couldn’t stop.

Hermann snatched his cane and raced across the floor, taking him by the non-contaminated shoulder. “Newton.”

“It’s alright, I’m alright, I just—wooo, that was, uh, well that was crazy!” wow, were the fumes getting to him already? “I just, uh, shouldn’t probably be touching it—or you—you should leave, right now, probably, uh—” Newt reached to unbutton his shirt and smeared blue across his forearm. “Oh, fuck!”

Hermann grabbed him by the wrist, pulled his hand away, wriggled out of his outer sweater and wiped off the kaiju blue with it. “Clean,” he said, voice tense, and “don’t move, I’ll be right back.” He moved off—towards Newt’s side of the room, for some reason—and Newt focused on scrubbing clean his arm, not that it would do much good because the rest of his clothes were soaked and there was no way he’d be able to get them off without smearing it all over his skin. Even worse than it already was, that is.

“Aright,” said Hermann, and Newt saw him holding one of his dissection knives, designed to cut cleanly through muscle and sinew.

“Ah—Jesus, Hermann, those are sharp—”

“I’m aware. I’m good with knives.” He paused, looking at Newton for confirmation.

“Okay then go for it.”

He couldn’t help wincing as he felt the blade rip through the fabric of his shirt, but it never touched his skin and in a few seconds he was wiping the kaiju blue off his chest while Hermann worked on cutting off his sleeve without spreading more of it onto his arm.

“Don’t get any of that on you,” he said, and Hermann hushed him. He hoped that didn’t mean he already had. His sleeve dropped off his arm in shreds and he folded the sweater to a clean part to wipe off his upper arm. Hermann, meanwhile, was slicing through the thick leather of his belt with a slow, controlled cut, careful to pull the blade outwards, away from his skin. Newton was still intensely aware of how close it was to his organs. Unlike a kaiju, there wasn’t much of him to cut through before hitting something vital. The thought didn’t bother him as much as he would’ve thought.

Hermann cut a slit down the side of his jeans, struggling a little with the thick fabric, and Newton kicked out of the wet part, wriggled out of the other leg, and stripped off his underpants and shoes, scrubbing at himself with the sweater.

“Okay. Uh, I think I’m just gonna make a run for the nearest shower, can I keep the sweater?” he asked, holding it in front of him. Hermann winced at the still-wet patches of blue on the sweater and crossed to his side of the room, pulled a cardigan off the back of a chair, bundled it up and tossed it at him.

“That one’s clean. You’re welcome. My price is you stop commenting on how many sweaters I have, now go.”

“Wow thanks! And uhh no problem, cuz you’re going to have a lot less once I get kaiju blue all over—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be running?”

“Right! Yes! You should also not be in here until I’ve cleaned that up! And wash your hands!” Newt bolted for the door.

He’d washed three times and his skin was still burning, but he thought the worst was over. Which just left him with the whole “stranded naked in the grungiest, least-used showers in the Shatterdome with his cell phone back in the pocket of his now incredibly toxic jeans” problem. …Also the “needing to explain to his doctor that he’d gone and doused himself in kaiju blue” problem, which would probably be an interesting conversation. Eesh.

He wondered if he could get back to his room without running into anyone in the hallways. That was…. Incredibly unlikely. He’d already thrown out Hermann’s second sweater because his hands had been dirty when he touched it, but maybe it wasn’t so bad? Not worse than walking back with his entire ass exposed, surely? Maybe he could just go back to the lab and… find something? Maybe? Maybe Hermann had one more spare modesty sweater he could steal, he thought with a chuckle.

He heard the door to the bathroom open. “Newton?”

“Hermann?”

“I brought you some clothes, what should I do with them?”

“Oh thank God I was just about to try walking back naked.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I mean it wasn’t one of my best ideas and one of my ideas recently got me covered in toxic goop so like! Yeah thanks for that!”

“Do you want me to pass them to you?”

“Uh, no, I’ll come get it when I’m done, nowhere to put em in here.”

“Right, I’ll just, ah. On the sink? I’ll be outside.”

“Thanks!”

the door swung shut before Newton could ask if he’d washed his hands really really well. 

Finally, when he’d scrubbed his skin so much it literally squeaked, he decided he’d done as much as he could and shut the water off. Hermann had apparently brought him a towel as well as a change of clothes—Hermann’s, which made sense now that he thought about it; a dust-blue shirt that was surprisingly soft (and an undershirt he didn’t bother with? Layers were hot?? he did take the hilariously old-man-lookin boxer shorts though) and some pants that barely fit over his hips. He was saved by Hermann’s fondness for loose clothing. 

Hermann was leaning against the wall opposite when he came out. “Wash your hands?” Newt asked.

“Several times, yes.”

He looked like he’d changed his clothes too, so he was probably fine, or as fine as could reasonably be expected. The effects of kaiju blue on the human body were still being studied (and he didn’t think there were any studies about putting it, undiluted, directly on your skin, because it was generally known that that was a bad thing to do!) but hopefully they’d both be fine. Especially Hermann, who wasn’t supposed to have been involved in the first place.

“Why don’t we have a shower in the lab if you’re going to be working with such toxic stuff?” He asked while Newt tucked his shirt in. “Don’t they have those—what do they call them, the little panic showers? For when you get something toxic on you and have to get it off as quickly as possible? That’s more your kind of thing, right? I don’t know the terminology, I think the worst injury I could give myself would be from inhaling too much chalk dust.”

“Herm have you noticed how we’re constantly breaking safety rules every day just being in there? Funding is uh, not great, but I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

“ _I’m_ not breaking any safety rules. How many are _you_ breaking?”

“You know what, never mind this whole conversation.”

“While we’re on the subject, this whole problem might have been averted if you’d been wearing proper safety gear—”

“Oh here we go again.”

“Or at LEAST a lab coat. Isn’t that the whole function of the damn things? To keep what you’re working with from getting on your clothes?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.”

“Don’t “I know” me, why weren’t you?”

“Look, even if I normally bothered or remembered or cared or whatever—and, I mean, it’s USUALLY not a problem—”

“Right, like seatbelts are USUALLY unnecessary, Newton, every safety measure is unnecessary until the moment it _is_ necessary—”

“the specimens I usually work with are safe to touch, though maybe not, like, extensively—anyways, I just received this, I wasn’t even planning on opening it yet so I wouldn’t have been prepared anyway! Uh, this is on whatever idiot packed the case.”

“Can you sue them?”

“I dunno, don’t really want to, but I’m definitely going to figure out who’s responsible and send them a strongly-worded email about safety procedures.”

“That’s a bit rich coming from you, but I agree, that’s the bare minimum of what you should do.”

“Ha, sure. Actually, considering how weird the, uh, supply chain is for this stuff, that might not be feasible either, I’ll have to…” he gestured vaguely. “Figure that out later. After I clean up the spill in the lab, before someone slips in it.”

“I taped a keep out sign to the door before I left.”

“Oh, good thinking! I guess I was just betting on the fact that we’re usually the only ones who go in there.”

“Safety measures,” said Hermann, inclining his head, and Newton rolled his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> ….what IS the name for the little panic showers? I’ve definitely seen them, the example that comes to mind is in a printmaking studio where the students would be using strong chemicals. They had like, the thing where you spray your eyes with two jets of water if you get something in your eyes, and there was also a similar deal that was a full shower type thing I think? Maybe that was somewhere else and I’m getting the two mixed up. What is that called?! There’s gotta be a name for it but damned if I'm gonna look it up right now I'm writing this to distract myself from crazy life stuff goign on right now I'm not here for extensive mental effort & research I just gotta Not Think About Some Things hope u enjoyed   
> wait. no. im back. what did the sign Hermann put on the door say?? "my colleague has no regard for lab safety and has spilled an incredibly toxic material all over the floor don't come in here unless you want to dramatically shorten your lifespan" -Dr. H. Gottlieb


End file.
